1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns floors constructed of leather, and particularly floors constructed from leather floor tiles.
2. Background of the Invention
Leather is a common material which is, nonetheless to its commonness, exotic of application in flooring.
Leather might be considered unsuitable for use in floors, but this is a misconception. Tanned leather is generally available in thicknesses up to 3/16". The greater thicknesses of leather exhibit considerable resiliency under foot. Thick leather is suitably wear resistant for all but high traffic areas. It is substantially puncture resistant, even to womens' high heels. Damage to the surface of stained and/or varnished leather can normally be readily repaired by the addition of further stain or varnish as the case requires.
Leather is a relatively expensive material for floors, but is not a functionally unsuitable material for floors. A certain previous paucity of use of leather in floor surfaces is probably due more to the aesthetic appearance of leather in this application than to its functional suitability. The use of leather underfoot is as old as the spreading of hides upon the ground by primitive man. However, when leather is applied to flat flooring surfaces such as are typical in modern buildings then the appearance of the leather floor so created has not been aesthetically optimal.
The mere application of leather to a planar flooring surface produces a leather-surfaced floor having a substantially dull and lifeless appearance. The sensuous visual appeal of leather is substantially diminished, or lost altogether, when broad expanses of leather are laid in a substantially flat plane, as upon a floor. A substantially planar leather floor surface shows substantial areas that strongly reflect light and that gloss brightly over a range of light incidence angles. Meanwhile, other areas, at other light incidence angle ranges, do not reflect light to an observer's eye and appear dull.
Light in rooms typically comes from only a few sources, such as the sun. A flat leather floor illuminated from just a few light sources will typically show a bright gloss over an area, typically of several square feet, that is adjacent to a relatively darker and duller area. The visual effect of the bright and dull areas shifts with the visual angle of the viewer. Not only is this visual effect not aesthetically pleasing, it actually replicates the light reflectivity of inferior flooring materials such as linoleum.
A large flat leather floor is jarring to the sensibilities. It is generally outside the common experience of most people who have, at times, walked on wood, metal, plastic and ceramic as well as upon all types of natural terrain. Yet leather is a very popular, luxury, material in demanding applications such as luggage and saddlery. The scarcity of leather floors may be indicative that such floors have not been widely realized with satisfactory aesthetic results, and not that such floors cannot technically be realized.
Improvements to the aesthetic visual appearance of a leather floor are desired. The leather upon a floor surface might be patterned, textured, or otherwise altered in order to improve its visual appearance. However, such alterations to the surface of the leather would diminish its serviceability in flooring applications while generally failing to recapture the aesthetic appeal that leather should generally possess, and that seems to be lost in its application in flooring.